Jan Elaine Soriano, BSc
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the neuroscience graduate program at the University of Calgary (UofC). To this end, as a third-year Ph. D. trainee in Dr. Aaron Phillips’ lab, I have had opportunities to collaborate with leading research institutions (University of Minnesota, US, King’s College London, UK, and EPFL [École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne], Switzerland) and receive first-hand training in both preclinical and clinical skills. These skills spanned from invasive animal surgeries, clinical non-invasive neuroimaging, and computational analysis. I am proficiently trained in performing preclinical experiments that involve understanding the mechanisms of epidural stimulation and harnessing this knowledge to develop next-generation neuroprosthetics after spinal cord injury. These techniques include: 1) neuro-anatomical tracing in spinal cord injury, 2) optogenetic manipulation of cardiovascular regulatory centres, and 3) advanced computational neuroscience (i.e., automated neuronal characterization and quantification etc.). I am also proficiently trained to execute clinical experiments such as autonomic data collection in humans (i.e., beat-by-beat blood pressure, end-tidal gases, cerebral blood flow, etc.) and analyses.